iPhone/iPod touch: Small sensors in smartphone cameras always lead to everything being in focus. SynthCam uses some clever tricks to allow your iDevice to emulate the shallow depth of field look you can achieve with DSLR cameras. More »

The web is rich with streaming video, and there’s no reason you should limit yourself to enjoying it all on smaller screens. Here’s how to roll your own home theater PC and consolidate your media center components to one small, sleek box. More »

With the Solar TV Remote project from MAKE Volume 25, you’ll never have to replace your remote control’s batteries again. Instead, just leave it in the sun to charge up! This project is fairly easy and you may already have most of the tools and supplies you’ll need. It might also make you feel slightly less guilty about being a couch potato!

I’m incredibly happy to say that. For years (as many of you know) I was in terrible health — I was overweight and sedentary and addicted to junk food and a smoker and overworked.

Today after more than five years of living healthy I am about 65 pounds lighter. I’m leaner than I’ve been since probably high school with the same pants size as I had in high school (32) — while being much stronger than I was back then. More importantly I am fitter: I can run and play sports and hike and do activities of all kinds better than ever before.

How have I achieved all of this? Slow change. I’ve done no fad diets or quick weight loss. I’ve done nothing extreme. Everything is about living healthier and eating whole foods and being active most days. And about enjoying the journey.

Today I thought I’d share a bit about how I eat. It’s not meant to be copied exactly but to inform others trying to make a similar journey. Next week I’ll talk about my exercise.

Overall philosophy

My general philosophy of eating:

I don’t go for anything extreme. I’ve made small changes to my diet over the years and have found this works best: if you try for drastic changes you’ll hate it and won’t stick to it for long. But add a few extra fruits and veggies and it’s not hard. Change soda to water next month and it’s not deprivation.

I eat slowly. OK … not always but most of the time. Eating slowly allows me to fully savor the taste of the healthy food I eat and at the same time eat less while still feeling satiated (not stuffed).

I eat real foods. I try for veggies and fruits and raw nuts and seeds and beans and some whole grains. Sometimes my food is processed but mostly it’s just the stuff you’ll find in the produce and bulk sections of a supermarket (or farmer’s market).

I eat plants. I do that mostly for reasons of compassion (killing animals for pleasure doesn’t feel right to me) but I’ve found it’s also an extremely healthy way to eat. Sure it’s possible to be vegan and unhealthy (eat processed fake meats and sweets) but if you’re a whole-food vegan it’s hard to go wrong. And yes it’s easy to get protein as a vegan.

I enjoy myself. I look for healthy foods I love — berries for example — and savor them. I’ll eat sweets now and then but in small portions and truly enjoy the few bites I have. I have red wine and love it. I drink beer sometimes and it’s wonderful. I have pizza about once a week and it’s delicious. Eating healthy isn’t about deprivation but about finding ways to enjoy yourself while living a healthy life.

My Diet

This month I’ve cut my less healthy choices down to Saturdays — as inspired by Tim Ferriss’s book The 4-Hour Body. That means I only eat pasta and pizza and sweets and beer and French fries on Saturdays. This has gotten me even leaner and I recommend this way of living.

The rest of the week I eat my own version of Tim’s Slow Carb Diet — the Leo version. That means I eat a little fruit and a few whole grains and I don’t eat the meat. I don’t eat fried foods or drink calories (other than red wine at dinner) or eat white carbs (pasta bread rice potatoes pizza).

What I eat:

Beans – lentils and black beans and kidney beans and pintos and soybeans.

Nuts and seeds – raw almonds and walnuts and seeds and olive oil and avocadoes.

Veggies – lots of greens like kale and spinach and chard and broccoli. Carrots and various bell peppers and sprouts and so on.

Fruits – berries and apples and oranges and a little dried fruits like raisins. In moderation.

Whole grains – steel-cut oats and Ezekiel flourless sprouted-grains bread and quinoa (not technically a grain). That’s about it — I don’t eat pastas or whole-grain muffins or the like.

My Meals

My typical day usually goes like this:

Breakfast: Every day I eat steel-cut oats for breakfast late in the morning (usually between 10:30 and 11:30). I cook it and then mix it with flaxseeds and cinnamon and blueberries and raw almonds and a few raisins and maybe a small amount of banana or raspberries.

Lunch: Typically a big-ass salad with kale and spinach and sprouts and avocados and beans and raw nuts and a little fruit with balsamic vinegar. Sometimes I’ll eat a tofu stir-fry with greens.

Snack: If I’m hungry in the afternoon I’ll eat some raw nuts and dried fruit or veggies and hummus.

Dinner: Beans and veggies or a tofu-stir fry or veggie chili with beans. This meal varies. Sometimes the beans will be Indian style or Mexican style. Usually the veggies will be greens like kale or broccoli or chard. Sometimes I’ll have quinoa. Red wine with dinner.

And that’s about it. Over time I’ve found I need less food than I used to. Eat slowly and you’ll find yourself full on less food.

The Results

I used to spread my “cheats” throughout the week — a whole-grain muffin here and some pizza there and beer more than I’d like to admit. But putting everything on Saturdays has helped me be honest the rest of the week.

I honestly enjoy eating whole foods. I enjoy being lighter and leaner. I’ve gained muscle eating these foods though I might focus on building more muscle later in the year.

I run faster than ever. I can do more intense workouts than ever before. I was tested for various health indicators recently and everything was perfect. Eating this way has absolutely changed my life.

Notes

A couple notes to answer potential questions:

Soy is not unhealthy. You might have read various scare articles on the Internet about soy (usually based on misleading articles from the Weston A. Price Foundation) but they’re misinterpretations of science. I eat soy in moderation and try for whole soy in natural forms (tofu, tempeh, edamame, some natural soy milk). I don’t have man boobs and I’m absolutely healthy. Instead of pointing to “scientific” explanations of why soy is unhealthy show me the actual peer-reviewed studies that show that moderate amounts of natural soy (not soy protein isolate) have caused health problems.

You can absolutely get enough protein and calcium and iron on a vegan diet if you eat whole foods and not junk.

Sugar is junk and that includes white flour pasta and breads and French fries. It’s worthless calories. Whole grains in moderation provide nutrients and fiber.

A little meat in moderation is not unhealthy — especially if you choose grass fed and free range. Most people eat unhealthy amounts of meat and eggs and dairy. Those foods in any amount are unethical in my opinion — even if they’re grass fed and free range. Exploitation of animals as objects and their suffering for our pleasure is not compassionate. We don’t need animal products to live healthy lives — as my example shows — so the only reason to eat them is for our pleasure (we like the taste).

Soft, sweet, browned onions go great on burgers, among other dishes. But the time and know-how required are why dishes like French onion soup, and dip, aren’t made at home. Here’s how to get from raw to caramelized in just 20 minutes. More »

You know what I love about iPhoto? It’s a great central storage place for my media that just about any OS X app can pull photos from. You know what I hate about it? Everything else. To say I have a love/hate relationship with iPhoto is like saying Bill Buckner has a problem handle routine grounders in Game 6s of World Series. Here are a few tips I hope might alleviate some iPhoto frustrations you may have.

1. Use TidyUp To Purge Duplicates.TidyUp (download link), by Hyperbolic Software is a great way to search your iPhoto library for duplicate items. Every now and then, my iPhone will re-import photos, or forget it already imported them. TidyUp lets you search using some fairly granular criteria to eliminate duplicate files.

2. Keywords are your friends. I tend to go a bit keyword crazy. Every photo or image I import has keywords. A presentation image of a clock might have the keywords “presentation, time, clock, timepiece” assigned to it. A photo of my friend Mindy in Boston will have “Boston, Mindy, harbor” attached to it. Using keywords will make the next step, Smart Albums, a lot easier.

3. Use Smart Albums. I’m not a big fan of iPhoto’s Event-based organization. For starters, I hate how events are created by day. I don’t know about you, but the amount of true events (weddings, vacations, etc.) I shoot on an annual basis is minor. Instead I get a lot of onsey-twosie photo events that are a pain to organize. Also, a lot of images for me are multipurpose. Earlier, I mentioned I tag images I might use in presentations, so I’ve got a Smart Album built on the presentation keyword. I don’t like to rely on iPhoto’s Faces and Places intelligence, so I will also build Smart Albums based on areas I shoot a lot; I’ve got albums for Boston, Boothbay, and New York.

You can also use multiple keywords or criteria to create yet more specific albums. For example, you could create a Smart Album of wallpapers with the Apple logo you’ve created in the last year, that also have a ranking of five stars or higher.

4. Keep Events Window Clean. Like I said, most of the photos I take are random shots off my iPhone. My OCD really kicks in when I see events that aren’t events, so I keyword them and move them into a miscellaneous general purpose event. Periodically, I’ll go through that holding bin and, since most of the time my “I don’t know what else to do with this” event really is an “I don’t know why I took this photo” and I’ll purge 99 percent of the images there.

5. Empty the Trash and Purge. iPhoto has a separate trash can from the rest of OS X. Deleting an image won’t immediately delete the file from your hard drive. Instead you need to go in and manually empty the trash. Checking the trash periodically will let you permanently get rid of bad or duplicate photos, and might reveal some lost gems that look much better than you remember.

iPhoto is a great program, but it isn’t yet so perfect that it can’t stand improvement. These small changes take only a little time but add result in a markedly different user experience. Any other iPhoto tips you care to add?

In college, I had the opportunity to teach a “Student-Initiated Course,” or basically a course on whatever I wanted. So I got together with two of my friends and we put together a course on religious studies.

Now, Stanford gave us incredible flexibility to teach essentially whatever we wanted…but the student instructors never got letter grades — it was always Pass/No Pass (everybody always passed), issued by the sponsoring professor.

Until we came along.

You see, I was never the smartest person in any school I attended. But I got pretty street smart over the years. And so I petitioned the sponsoring professor to let us teach the class for a letter grade. I negotiated with her and convinced her to let us recommend our own grades (!), back it up with evidence, and she would approve it.

We would basically write our own ticket!

One of my co-instructors was amazed that I convinced the sponsoring professor to agree. He signed the papers to enroll for a letter grade instantly.

But my other co-instructor hesitated.

To give you some context, this guy was a PhD student in Computer Science at Stanford and had previously attended IIT, one of the most competitive technical universities in the world.

“Dude,” I said, “what’s your problem? Sign the damn papers. We’re going to get an A+, guaranteed. Take it for a letter grade!”

“No, Ramit,” he said, “I don’t know about this. I cannot take the risk.”

“What the hell?”

“Well….if I don’t get an A+, it will bring my GPA down.”

I just stared at him. It actually took me 10 seconds to understand what he meant. And then I got it.

An “A” is a 4.0. An “A+” gives you 4.3.

The only way an “A” could bring his GPA down was if he already had over a 4.0 GPA — he was just too modest to say it.

I was speechless. How do you even respond to that? “Ok,” I mumbled. Ever mindful of the risk, he didn’t sign the papers — and ended up taking the class Pass/No Pass.

When you negotiate your salary, it’s a cumulative benefit — and your salary will almost always increase from there. Therefore, if you negotiate a $5,000 salary increase for your first job, that single negotiation will be worth tens of thousands of dollars to you over your lifetime.

If you spend 30 minutes negotiating your cable bill, it’s worth hundreds of dollars. How many lattes would you have to give up to equal that?

This isn’t theoretical. Thousands of my students have negotiated all areas of their lives to improve how much they make, how much they work, and how they live.

Let me show you some case studies.

CASE STUDY: The multi-thousand-dollar salary increase

I taught my friend how to negotiate an $8,000 increase in salary and a 50% boost in equity in 4 hours.

In this video, learn how to:

Negotiate with an experienced recruiter

Rebound after you undercut yourself

Why reading a negotiation book is not enough

Know when to be adversarial and when to be cooperative

Notice that she took the time to PRACTICE, something that’s absolutely crucial to a negotiation. Negotiation is an area where books help a little — but then you need to do it to really learn and improve your skills.

CASE STUDY: Raising your rates

Note: This is not just about raising your freelance rates. You can apply this technique to areas like getting a salary increase.

In this video, you’ll learn:

The HUGE mistake I made when I asked for my first raise

How to seek out high value work AND make the time for it

The “solutions perspective” that leaves your clients ADDICTED to your service

An exact script to build in automatic raises in the future

Notice that I made every mistake in the book. We all make mistakes negotiating. I still get rejected all the time when I try to negotiate. But each time I do, I learn something and improve my skills for the next try.

3 examples of IWT readers who negotiated their way to success

Example 1: “This is almost 30k more than what I was making previously”

IWT reader Mark writes about how he negotiated $30,000+ at a new job:

“Not sure if you still have time to read all the stories thanking you, but I’m thanking you for it anyway.

I’m doing a job search now, and I have been going through your stuff on negotiation. I made the mistake early on (hard to avoid, actually) of giving out my previous salary; for one thing, I have had a lot of headhunters talking to me, and I didn’t realize this one was a recruiter (working on behalf of the company I’m being considered for). For headhunters I don’t care as much because it’s in their interests to get me a higher salary. But now of course I was worried about being boxed in. This also made me realize I was a fool to not care about a raise at my last job, as you covered in one of your videos, since it negatively affects things going forward.

Fortunately he posed the question over email, which I think tilted things in my favor.

Him:

I just want to make sure you are interested in the position and get a good feel as to what your time frame for making a move is? Also, I know we discussed briefly but I was hoping to get more clarity on what you are looking for from a compensation standpoint?

Me:

As for compensation, I’m not sure I could quantify that without getting a feel for where my skill level fits in with some of the other consultants after meeting with them during the tech interview. We had discussed the probable need for some training on the business side, but I’m basically looking to make market rates for a C# developer, so I’m sure your consultants are within that range.

Him:

From a compensation standpoint, we would probably be looking in the $100k + or – range. It really depends on how the other interviews go.

This is almost 30k more than what I was making previously…he knows this. But here’s the real coup-de-grace: I was going to be stupid and say something like 80-90k, but I shut up and put it back to him, and look what we’ve got.”

Example 2: “I quoted $125/hour. They accepted. Within 2 hours.”

IWT reader A.B. writes about how he negotiated his FIRST-ever consulting deal:

“[COMPANY NAME] approached me about hiring me as a consultant. They want me to basically look at their programs, blogger outreach, creative, and copy and tell them what I think sucks from a blogger’s perspective. They don’t want me to endorse them, just tell them what turns bloggers off.

They took me out to fancy dinner in Vegas (during BlogWorld), as I was skeptical of working with them. They overcame some of the skepticism, but obviously wanted a quote.

As you may have guessed, I’ve never consulted with a company, nor had any idea what to quote them. I assumed they wanted 5-10 hours-ish.

As I was sending them a quote, i struggled with what to quote (time & money) – I literally thought “What would Ramit do?”. I would probably do it for $47/hour realistically right now, but knew that was way too low. I ended up telling them my rates were $197/hour, but if they booked 40 hours (remember I thought they wanted 5-10) I would give them $125/hour.

They accepted. Within 2 hours.

Which I know means I offered too low, haha, but I’m o.k. with that. Learning experience. They think they want more like 60-80 and have sent me estimates that point to so, but are guarantee’ing 40, including paying for all expenses to fly me out to [LOCATION] in early November.

They’ve also indicated that they’d like to have an ongoing relationship after this initial 2-3 month period.

This $5,000-$10,000 is a great place to start for me (I haven’t advertised any consulting ever… they came to me). Even though I could have gotten more (likely) I would have NEVER thought to push that high in hours or rate had it not been for your influence.

Next time I’ll quote double. ;-)”

– A.B.

Example 3: “With a 12-month lease, that is a savings of $1800!”

IWT reader Sharon C. writes

“Hi Ramit,

I’ve been reading your blog for about 2-3 years now and I’ve learned a lot of useful tips over the years. The biggest thing I learned so far is that you can negotiate a lot more things than you think you can (and don’t be afraid to ask)! So the leasing office sent me a notice that I need to renew my lease for my apartment in San Jose, or they’d make me pay $50 more month-to-month (which is normal).

I was paying $1585 (up from $1515 about 1.5 years ago) and I’ve lived in the apartment for 3 years. I heard that rent has been dropping in my area due to the economy, so I called up a few competing apartment complexes and asked them for their current price on a similar square footage apartment. The average was about $1400 so I knew I was overpaying.

When I went to ask for a rent reduction, the office kept on insisting that I was already paying “market rate.” I let them know that I was serious on leaving if they didn’t give me a lower rate. I talked to a higher up manager and after about a week, she was able to give me a rate of $1435 which is $150 off my previous rent! She stated that since we had lived there for 3 years she was able to give me the lower rate, which is the same rate as what the last tenants that moved in are paying.

With a 12-month lease, that is a savings of $1800! It also saves us the trouble of moving out. Thanks for your blog and all the work that you do!”

As you know, this month I’m focusing on hustling, or doing extraordinary work to achieve disproportionate results.

Negotiating is a key part of hustling. Not only does the behavior matter — knowing what to say, how to say it, when to NOT say something — but the mindset of “Yes, I can negotiate that!” is critical.

In fact, the powerful principles behind negotiation are critical to understand.

10 negotiation principles you can apply today

Here are 5 principles of negotiation you can apply today.

Know what you want. If you walk into a salary negotiation without a number, you’re at the mercy of an experienced hiring manager who will simply control the conversation. That’s what they do. When you know what you want, not only can you communicate that crisply to the other person, you can demonstrate why — and this forces you to prepare for the negotiation. In other words, you can’t just say, “I want to make $95,000!!!” You have to SHOW why you’re worth it. This single distinction can be worth thousands to you.

Know who you’re negotiating with. When someone negotiated with me, he kept offering things I didn’t care about, like “I can also do X for you, and Y, and Z.” But had he taken the time to find out what I REALLY wanted — reliability — he would have been able to offer specific examples like a weekly digest of what he’d accomplished and what he was working on the next week. And he could have charged me thousands for that peace of mind. Instead, I didn’t hire him.

Have a toolbox. Amateurs walk into a negotiation and just “wing it.” Top negotiators have a “toolbox” of options to use. If the other person doesn’t seem to care about vacation days, they press that lever. If the other person seems flexible on pay (which happens more than you’d imagine, like in the above example), a good negotiator will get a higher salary and trade something else. Creating a toolbox can be as simple as writing 2 columns on a piece of paper — “What THEY want” vs. “What I want” — but can get much more sophisticated.

Practice relentlessly. Most people will lose tens of thousands of dollars over their lifetimes due to their failure to practice negotiations. Actually, most people won’t negotiate at all. But even the people who negotiate rarely practice. It feels “weird.” Who would I practice with? What do I say?

Yet if you don’t practice with a qualified friend or colleague, why would you expect to get good results in a real negotiation with a competent adversary? Hiring managers do this all day. Hotel clerks have heard everything under the sun.

One of my favorite things to do is share the practice I’ve done in the form of scripts — like the negotiation scripts in my book. A lot of times, people are skeptical about the book until they try one of the scripts…then they realize, “Wow. This works.”

Have a fallback. There’s a classic psychological technique called the “Door in the Face” technique. It goes like this: “Hey Mike, would you donate $50 to the Save The Whale Foundation?” “Hell no.” “Ok, how about $5?” And donations increase dramatically.

Don’t shoot your first basket in the NBA. I am trying to use more sports analogies to try to fool people into thinking I care at all about sports. As you can tell I have a long way to go.

Anyway, your first negotiation shouldn’t be against a hiring manager. Start off small — in a real-world environment — at your local farmer’s market. Try negotiating on Craigslist. By the time you get to the real negotiation, the one that matters, you’ll have several negotiations under your belt. The difference will likely be worth thousands.

The main MYTHS of negotiation are:

These are classics but I continue hearing them and it’s driving me nuts.

Myth: Negotiation has to be adversarial. This is a good excuse that people use to avoid negotiating. “I don’t want to be mean” or “He’s just a small-business owner.” First, an effective negotiator is rarely mean. Instead, they explore the situation and use words like, “We’re close, but we just need to find a good fit here” rather than “I hate you and please die…ps can you give me a deal.”

Myth: I need to read (and read, and read) about negotiation before I try it. Yes, you do need to get educated. But you’ll learn 100x more from practicing 5 negotiations than from reading yet another book or blog post about negotiation. Try searching Google for “How to negotiate salary” to see how terrible most of the advice is, anyway.

Myth: You can negotiate anything. I just got this email from a reader:

“I have a situation where there was an $150 application fee to apply for a membership to the YMCA. The application fee was paid and there were attempts to have it waived but they did not budge. Now the fee has been reduced and other attempts to get the application fee they paid back have not worked. Are there any tips/suggestions/script suggestions they could try to negotiate with them?”

My response:

“Sometimes you just have to eat the costs.”

You can’t negotiate everything. And you’re not entitled to a deal on everything. But pick your battles, because the right ones can save/generate tens of thousands of dollars for you.

Myth: Some people are born negotiators. I was bred to be a negotiator by my parents. For example, my mom would show me how to negotiate at department stores when I was a little kid. Then, visiting India, I saw the game taken to a whole new level. The point is, the people around you matter. Practice matters. Sure, none of us may ever be the world’s top negotiator…but we don’t have to. If we just become marginally better negotiators than we currently are, we can reap disproportionate rewards.

TO DO THIS WEEK

Spend 30 minutes — but only 30 minutes — reading the case studies, scripts, and examples on this page: How to negotiate.

Leave your results of the negotiation, AND THE SCRIPT YOU USED, in the comments section of this post with the heading “WEEK 3 RESULTS” by Wednesday at 11:59pm PST.

Note: Be respectful when you negotiate. Never take advantage of the other person and never get rude. Negotiation is a back-and-forth dance where you find a solution agreeable to both of you. You’ll see the collaborative way I approach negotiation in my examples. Please treat this exercise with respect.

Also note: Unless you’ve been planning to negotiate your salary for a long time, I would not encourage you to negotiate it in 48 hours. A successful salary negotiation takes longer than that, and I don’t want you to jeopardize your chances of success down the road.

With that said…

Think BIG. Bonus points to anyone who negotiates something incredible, like a free computer or a trip to Jamaica.

The person who gets the best results can choose between…

1) $200 of my favorite negotiation books shipped to your door or…. 2) A 15-minute call with me to coach you on becoming a skilled negotiator

What’s coming the rest of the week

This is Week 3 of my free 30-day course on hustling. This week, we’re covering negotiation techniques to dominate.

Monday: How to negotiate to get higher hourly rates, to get meetings with top executives, and how to convince people to pay you for your valuable services.

Tuesday: What’s Earn1k 2.0 about — and how can it help you earn more money?

Wednesday: Special webcast, details TBD. Keep your evening clear!

Thursday: Winner of “Take Action” award for this week + case studies

Friday: Case study: What can we learn about pickup artists and personal finance?

I’ve put together some bonuses for you this week to go along with the free blog material on negotiation.

If you sign up to be on my private list all about hustling, earning more, and becoming a top performer, I’ll be giving away recordings and case studies all week.

P.S. – If you want a head start with this week’s challenge, here’s a free chapter from my book on optimizing your credit cards, where you’ll find an exact script to use if you missed a payment or want to negotiate the APR:

– A invite to my private webcast with Tim Ferriss – where you’ll learn his top time-management techniques, how to create your first muse, and how he hustled 2 books onto the NYT #1 seller list when 26 publishers turned him down. – A full recording of my private webcast with Tim Ferriss – in case you can’t make it… – Earn1 Bonus Case Study – Unlocking side income: From $0 to $1,500/month in 2 weeks

Test pilot wanted

Looking for people who is interested in auto sport to become a TestFlight pilot for up-coming new release of AR1 iPhone APP.
During the TestFlight you will have access to the latest auto news and content from iPhone.